Winner of the Sweater Giveaway Limerick Contest: Danny D!

According to the venerable Pa Perlman, the winning limerick came from Danielle of PDX! Congrats, Danny! Here are her champion verses:

My dearest fetus begs me to tell thee
"Aunt Nina thou art so beautiful and witty"
Oh please give to my fetus
Who has yet to meet us
Thy sweater that shall make her so pretty!

Pa felt it triumphed "for its adherence to form, wit, expectancy and joie de spirit."

To my other contestants: don't have the sads! Remember I am always available should you choose to commission a knitted item, so long as you purchase the yarn and kick in a few extra clams for labor. Everybody wins! 

V. Presh Sweater Giveaway

I had an extremely productive weekend, during which I managed to increase the amount of time I have between necessity laundry loads by a week thanks to a VS sale, cut short my macaron retirement with a batch of perfect pistachio, made a number of Hunger Games-related puns after viewing said film, and MADE THE CUTEST LITTLE BABY SWEATER YOU EVER DID SEE.

Seriously. How adorbs is that? I was cooing over it like it was a fluffy baby chipmunk when I made those itty bitty sleeves and that adorable little ribbed collar. 

Due to the fact that I have a dearth of 18-month-old little ladies in my life and there are too many boo-boos in this, my first attempt at the pattern, to try to sell it, I'm GIVING IT AWAY! EVERYBODY DANCE!

I think instead of making you tweet about how much you lurve my blog or demanding that you give me a handmade item in exchange, I shall make this a limerick contest similar to the one I unleashed on my coworkers of yore for the grand prize of Curly Hair Classy.

Your mission, Francey Pantsers, is to create the most glorious limerick on the subject of Youth and leave it in the comments by 5:00 p.m. CST this Wednesday, March 28. I will again enlist the help of my Pa, a publisher of Minnesota's finest poets, to judge the bestest. 

May the odds be ever in your favor!

The fine print: Contest limited to those living close enough to yours truly for personal delivery. Exceptions will be made for those who want to kick in a few bucks for shipping.

While visions of snails danced through my head...

My mind is definitely drifting toward Europa these days. It's hard not to be awash in nostalgia when this time last year I was enjoying a perpetual spring that started in Rome in February, hopped to Paris in March, and then stretched to Amsterdam and Berlin in April.

I've been watching a lot of Euro-centric documentaries and films, most recently "The Lives of Others" and "A Woman in Berlin." Being immersed in German reminds me of the phrase I had prepared to say to the pharmacist in hopes of getting relief from seasonal allergies in Berlin last year:

"Ich habe ein Großen gesundheit für das Blume... eins, zwei, drei, veir, fünf gesundheit! Bitte, macht mein Schnoz frei?"

Who's a hyperglot and has watery eyes? This fille.

My transatlantic longing is only going to deepen now that I've purchased my plane tickets to go to France this August. My wonderful Frenchy friend Suzanne alerted me to the fact that my travels coincide with the festival that put Digoin on the map: the annual Fete de l'Escargot. According to Wikipedia, Digoin has held the record for escargots consumption since 2007, when 100,800 escargots awash with 500 kg of butter, 55 kg of parsley and 33 kg of garlic were eaten.

OMD. Can you even believe my luck??